Editorial: Board Games scandal over, but who's next?

Remember: 'Pain, agony, shame and humiliation'

August 05, 2013

Jacob Kiferbaum, the last defendant in the federal Operation Board Games investigation, leaves with wife Sandy after his sentencing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago on Wednesday. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune)

Operation Board Games, the reason Rod Blagojevich is serving 14 years in federal prison, is officially over. The last defendant, Jacob Kiferbaum, a suburban construction executive, was sentenced last week to 27 months in prison for his part in a hospital shakedown scheme. The resulting corruption investigation brought down the then-governor. Kiferbaum was the last of 15 defendants to be sentenced in the decade-old Board Games probe.

Kiferbaum, as many people facing a stretch in federal prison tend to be, was contrite and apologetic.

He wept as he read a short statement in court apologizing for his wrongdoing and the "pain, agony, shame and humiliation" he had caused his family. "I'm truly sorry for the part I played and the poor choices I made so many years ago," he told the court.

U.S. District Judge John Grady no doubt has heard these kinds of teary confessions before. The judge, at 84, has watched along with all Illinois citizens as corruption scandal after scandal has unfolded in this state, regular as snow in winter.

In court Grady said he wished he could be more optimistic that examples like the takedown of Kiferbaum would deter others from betraying themselves, their families and their fellow citizens.

"We live in a state unfortunately afflicted by political corruption," Grady said. "It's been that way for as long as most of us can remember. ... We keep hoping things are going to change."

Amen, Your Honor. But experience intrudes.

We hoped things would change after the devastating revelations of Operation Greylord in the 1980s. That investigation exposed rampant and brazen corruption in the Cook County court system. Prosecutors indicted 92 people including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, one state legislator and assorted police officials for their attempts to fix cases, according to the FBI. Nearly all were convicted.

We hoped things would change after Operation Silver Shovel in the 1990s. In that investigation, a government informant doled out cash payments or other bribes to several Chicago aldermen and other city officials in exchange for their help in snaring contracts. Six Chicago alderman — most notably Ald. Larry Bloom, a self-proclaimed champion of clean government — and a dozen others were convicted. (Side note: This year, former Chicago Ald. Ambrosio Medrano, who pleaded guilty in the Silver Shovel probe, was convicted a second time on corruption-related charges when a federal jury found him guilty of trying to win a contract in Los Angeles through bribery.)

We hoped things would change after Operation Safe Road, the late1990s federal probe of a bribes-for-driver's-licenses scheme that disgraced another governor, George Ryan. Who could forget the deaths of the six children of the Rev. Duane "Scott" Willis and his wife, Janet, in a 1994 Wisconsin traffic accident involving a truck driver who had paid a bribe to obtain his license from one of Ryan's secretary of state's offices?

Safe Road unfolded over several years and led to 75 convictions, including that of Ryan in 2006 for racketeering, conspiracy and fraud. The former governor left federal prison this year after serving more than five years.

Along the way, over the past several decades, lower-profile corruption probes have sent all manner of public officials to jail. The tally is extensive; the field for federal prosecutors is ever fertile.

Kiferbaum joins a long line of the powerful and wealthy who ruined their lives, their families and the lives of so many others through their acts of corruption and venality. Remember Kiferbaum's litany of personal punishments beyond the prison term Judge Grady imposed: "Pain, agony, shame and humiliation."

Kiferbaum provides but the latest cautionary tale for those in power across the state.

If only they would learn.

If only Operation Board Games was the operation that cured, once and for all, the disease of public corruption.

Instead we're left with the unofficial motto of Illinois: "Who's next?"